Exploding paint bombs on a Glasgow council estate to sell televisions (Sony Bravia); running shoes that talk to your computer and connect you to a virtual network (Nike); a wind-up laptop making technology available in the remotest corners of the world, (One Laptop per Child); a video game that trains your brain (Nintendo);  visitors to Urbis in Manchester this Winter will be able to learn the stories behind the advertising and design that impacts on our lives.

About the AuthorKenya Hara (1958) is a graphic designer, Professor at the Art University Musashino and communication advisor for Muji.

Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara (born 1958) pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he impresses upon the reader the importance of emptiness in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work: Hara for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998. In 2001, he enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably moulded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since. Kenya Hara, alongside Naoto Fukasawa one of the leading design personalities in Japan, has also called attention to himself with exhibitions such as Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century of 2000.

So many voices have expressed their thoughts on Adobes new icons so far and one of the more noticeable one from users is that they all thought it was some temporary place holder art. When I first saw the splash screen and application icon of Adobe Photoshop CS3 my thinking pattern was that Macromedia had its influence in the branding process: the idea of using different colors for each application and the way the splash screen is organized.

Undesign is a concept whose time has finally come. Creative individuals can harness the power and accessibility of the Internet to make media to their own standards and promote social change in the world around them. But how many are actually doing it? How many good designers (and writers and artists) are, in the words of the late Tibor Kalman, out there making trouble? Over the coming months, we’ve made it our mission to find them: The creative lunatics. The authentic voices. The community activists. The visionary entrepreneurs. The designers reaching out beyond their own ego. The culture jammers. The madmen and madwomen with a mission. The people that give something back. The ones making a difference…

Its that time of year when Adaptive Path wades through stacks of design school students resumes, looking for summer interns and potential hires. As I was doing this, a trend that that I had suspected became clear to me: quite a few design schools no longer teach design. Instead, they teach design thinking and expect that that will be enough.